4 Gods Admiralty

THE CENTRE Of Florida's Suncoast is the beautiful bay which stretches
out from the town of Tampa. On its southern branch is St Petersburg
where I once watched the most lurid sunset I have ever seen flood the
sky with colour. Hours earlier a storm in the Gulf of Mexico had been
signposted by a 'twister' which moved menacingly across the horizon.
On the north of the bay of Tampa is the sleepy town of Clearwater. In
1975 its mainly retired community, many of whom were Baptists,
were feeling a chill wind of recession in the tourist trade. The splendid
Fort Harrison Hotel run by the Jack Tar organization was for sale in
the downtown area around the waterfront overlooking the municipal
buildings which administered the town - incorporated under a Home
Rule Charter of the State of Florida. A block away was the former
Bank of Clearwater building which was also for sale. Another few
blocks away was the Sandcastle Motel, which was also feeling the
pinch.

On 27 October 1975, the Fort Harrison Hotel was purchased by
Southern Land Sales and Development Corporation for $2.3 million
hard cash, and a few days later the corporation acquired the bank
building for $550,000. Then a spokesman for the United Churches of
Florida stepped up to say that his organization was to be leased the
buildings to hold ecumenical seminars for laymen of all faiths. Jack
Tar Hotels were still puzzled when they were not even given a
telephone number by the mysterious Southern Land Sales organization.
They were soon to discover that both it and United Churches of
Florida were fronts for the Church of Scientology.

Part of the plan in acquiring the new headquarters in Florida was to
provide a 'dormant Corp' into which the assets and cash of the Church
of Scientology of California could be siphoned off should they be

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seized or wiped out by the IRS in California, which still controlled the
purse-strings. Another purpose was to provide a 'Flag Land Base'
which would take over the functions of the harassed *Apollo*.

There was another policy which was the brain-child of the new
Guardians' Office. This was to establish the credibility of United
Churches with opinion leaders in the local community. A directive
ordered Scientologists to 'locate opinion leaders - then their enemies.
the dirt, scandal, vested interests, crimes of the enemies...then turn
this information over to UC who will approach the opinion leader and
get his agreement to look into a specific subject....UC then discovers
the scandal and turns it over to the opinion leader for his use.' An
actual example was given of an enemy of one mayor who was a secret
child-molester in the local park: the UC would demand a 'clean up the
park campaign' which would just happen to disclose this dirt. This
information would then be handed to the mayor on a plate. With
friends like that, you might ask, what opinion leader needed enemies?

This ploy rebounded rather badly on the Church of Scientology.
Clearwater's Mayor, Gabriel Cazares, was none too impressed by the
secrecy of the 'United Churches' operation. 'I am discomfited by the
increasing visibility of security personnel armed with billyclubs and
mace, employed by the United Churches of Florida,' said the Mayor. 'I
am unable to understand why this degree of security is required by a
religious organization.'

On 28 January 1976, Arthur J. Maren of the Church of Scientology
arrived in Clearwater and announced that the church was the real
buyer of the Fort Harrison Hotel. The Church of Scientology did not
wish to overshadow the good intentions of the United Churches, said
Mr Maren. A public meeting was held at which the Church of Scientology
outlined its high moral principles. But concealed behind this
velvet voice was the steely intention to silence Mayor Cazares. On 6
February, just over a week after Maren came to town, a $1 million
lawsuit was filed against the Mayor for libel, slander and violation of
the church's civil rights. It didn't stop there. Behind the scenes a memo
was circulating among Scientologists. It read: 'SITUATION: set of
entheta (unfavourable) articles connection UC and LRH breaking now
in Flag area papers. WHY: Unhandled enemies; possible plant and
out-security. HANDLED: Collections and ops underway on reporters
Orsini, Sableman and Snyder (radio broadcaster). Results of ops not
in yet...'

The operations consisted of smear-tactics against the journalists
who had been investigating the Church of Scientology. 'Operation

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Bunny Bust' directed against reporter Bette Orsini of the *St Petersburg
Times* consisted of planting allegations that her husband was involved
in fraud activities in the charity for which he worked. There was no
substance in these allegations. Indeed, they had the opposite effect.
The newspapers filed a suit to prevent the church from harassing their
reporters and strengthened their resolve to expose as much of the
Church of Scientology's activities as possible. It was not until several
years later that the documents emerged which showed conclusively
that the smear-campaigns were authorized and directed by the Church
of Scientology; otherwise they might have been explained as
over-zealous conduct by paranoid Scientologists coming ashore from the
*Apollo*, which had landed at Daytona Beach. Another suggestion was
that dirt might be procured on the Chairman of the *St Petersburg
Times* by tapping his servants. But the most vicious campaign was
that directed at Mayor Cazares.

The first step in the campaign was a letter which purported to be
from one of the Mayor's supporters and was sent to downtown
businesses, especially the Jewish ones. 'God bless the Mayor' it began
and went on to congratulate Cazares on his stand against Scientology,
concluding: 'What we should do is make sure no more undesirables
move into Clearwater. We kept the Miami Jews from turning beautiful
Clearwater into Miami Beach. The blacks are decent and know their
place...' That was just for starters. The next ploy was to infiltrate a
forged document into a Mexican licence bureau which would 'prove'
that Cazares was bigamously married to his present wife. Mrs Cazares
was thus drawn into the tangled web. 'We'd been married twenty-nine
years. Suddenly I was getting all kinds of mysterious phone-calls: girls
calling "Is Gabe there?", telling me there's something personal between
"he and me". Asking me if I knew where - "Do you know where Gabe
is now?" - Things like that, you know.'

There was no end to the attempts to silence Gabriel's horn. In
February 1976 the possibility of trawling Cazares' school records was
being looked into. A few weeks later they schemed to present him as
pro-Castro to the many Cuban exiles who live in Florida. The darkest
operation yet was mounted in March 1976 when the Mayor went to
Washington for a national conference of mayors. He was met by
Joseph Alesi posing as a reporter and was introduced to Sharon
Thomas who offered to show him Washington. As Cazares and
Thomas were driving along, she hit a pedestrian (Church of Scientology
agent Mike Meisner who feigned injury) and drove on. Following
the hit-and-run 'accident', a church memo gleefully recorded 'I

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should think the Mayor's political days are at an end'. That was a very
real possibility, for Cazares was by this time a Democratic candidate
for the congressional seat held by Republican representative Bill
Young.

Over lunch, Young's administrative assistant was offered information
which could damage Cazares' campaign by a Church of Scientology
PR official. He refused the offer. So on 12 July, 'Operation
Keller' went into action to 'create havoc and political decay for
Cazares', Fake letters from 'Sharon T.' were mailed to political leaders
in Pinellas County stating that Cazares had been involved in a
hit-and-run accident in Washington. Cazares asked the FBI to investigate.
Meanwhile, Young received a letter saying that the 'Sharon T.' letter
was really authorized by the Cazares campaign in an attempt to implicate
him in dirty tricks. Let us just recap that sequence since it almost
defies credibility. The Guardians' Office of Scientology faked a
hit-and-run accident implicating Cazares and leaked this information
to his opponents, then wrote to these opponents double-bluffing them
into thinking that Cazares had faked it in order to discredit them. Iago
was a goody-goody compared to this lot.

In October, church agent Dick Weigand reported to his boss, Mo
Budlong: 'A recent poll conducted by the *Clearwater Sun* received
phoney responses from the public, generated covertly, which showed
that his (Cazares') opponent had a crushing lead on him.' On 3
November 1976 a triumphant memo from Joe Lisa to Duke Snider
recorded that Cazares had been defeated in the congressional race as a
result of Guardian Order 398 - an operation to create strife between
Cazares and the city commission; to place a church agent in his
campaign organization to cause problems ('spreading rumours in his
camp').

It was not the first nor the last time that infiltration had been
practised by the Church of Scientology. Meisner was currently running
agent 'Silver' (alias Gerald Bennett Wolfe) who had been employed as
a clerk-typist at the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) since 1974. *Femme
fatale* Sharon Thomas had got a job at the Justice Department in
January 1976 at Meisner's instigation. Back at 'Flag' in Clearwater,
there was also a plant in the *Clearwater Sun* newspaper office: June
Byrne who had been undercover at the AMA (American Medical
Association) and now was feeding the church daily reports on the
anti-Scientology activities of the paper. On 17 March 1976 she reported
that Assistant City Editor Tom Coat was taking a Scientology course
at the Tampa mission under cover as a freelance photographer. Coat

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was exposed by the church who issued a Press release and followed it
with a $250,000 lawsuit against Coat and the *Sun*. June Byrne duly
reported that Coat had heard about the lawsuit on his car radio and
had appeared in the office in a state of severe shock.

All this activity by the Guardians' Office did not win respectability
for the Church of Scientology; nor did it win the war of words. But if it
did not achieve a truce, it was at least partly effective in securing a
ceasefire from many of the church's opponents. Broadcaster [Job
Snyder of the WDCL radio station was fired after a $5 million lawsuit
was threatened against the station for anti-Scientology broadcasts he
was making. The station reinstated him but with a proviso that he did
not discuss Scientology on the air.

The church's libel action against Cazares was dismissed by Judge
Ben Krentzmann in Tampa in the spring of 1977 and it later dropped
two other lawsuits and Cazares withdrew *his* suit against the church.
The *Clearwater Sun* had planned a book on Scientology but this did
not appear. The *St Petersburg Times* did not pursue its lawsuit in
order to protect the slender financial resources of the Easter Seal
Society, the charity for which reporter Bette Orsini's husband
worked, which would have been drawn into the case. However, the *St
Petersburg Times* did publish a 25c booklet which details most of the
events which have just been described. They were able to do so when
many of the 48,149 internal Church of Scientology documents which
were seized in an FBI raid in 1977 on the Washington org, were made
public and nine senior Scientologists were sent to jail.

Books about Scientology have a greater permanency than newspaper
articles and therefore it should not come as a surprise that vigorous
smear-campaigns have been conducted against the authors of such
investigations. The first book to run foul of the church was *The
Scandal of Scientology* by journalist Paulette Cooper, which was
written in 1971. To try to silence her, the Church of Scientology
cooked up a scheme to steal some of her stationery and make it appear
that she had sent them two bomb threats. One of the forgeries read:
'James, this is the last time I'm warning you. I don't know why I'm
doing this but you're all out to get me and I'll give you one week before
Scientology is an exploding volcano. I'll knock you out if my friends
won't.' The Scientologists themselves then called in the police and as a
result Paulette Cooper was arrested and indicted on three counts,
facing up to fifteen years in jail if convicted. She told the '60 Minutes'
television programme in April 1980: 'The whole ordeal fighting these

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charges took eight months. I t cost me $19,000 in legal fees. I went into
such a depression. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't write. I
went down to 83 pounds. Finally I took and passed a sodium pentothal
- or truth serum - test and the Government dropped the charges
against me in 1975.' Further tactics were to write her phone number
and obscene graffiti on walls in New York City where she lives, and
put her name on pornographic mailing lists.

When the Clearwater scandal broke and she was booked to appear
in Florida at broadcaster Snyder's invitation, the church decided to
'handle' its old nemesis in a new operation entitled 'Freakout'. Its
goal was 'to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at
least hit her so hard that she drops her attacks'. Phase one involved
telephone threats to Arab consulates by a voice impersonator (Ms
Cooper is Jewish). Phase two, sending a threatening letter along the
old bomb-hoax lines to such a consulate. Phase three, an impersonator
would publicly threaten the President and Henry Kissinger while
another Scientologist would tip off the authorities. Phase four,
agents who had ingratiated themselves with Cooper (she at one time
apparently had a relationship with a Church of Scientology man who
was acting as an undercover agent) would help assess the success of the
plan and if necessary notepaper bearing her fingerprints would be
typed over with a bomb threat to Kissinger.

'Operation Freakout', however, didn't get off the ground. Although
she appeared in the television programme in 1980 and at the Clearwater
hearing instigated by attorney Michael Flynn, Cooper eventually
signed a truce with Scientology and was offered a settlement (*see
pages 142-3*). For some of the campaigners, the hassle, the wounds,
the possibility that justice may not be done, makes them back off.

Sparkling Clearwater has not forgotten the day the Scientologists
came to town. Those initial years when the cargo of frenzied 'Clears'
came pouring ashore and began their covert operations against
anyone who stood in their way, gave way to a period when the focus
of church activity shifted to the West coast. Hubbard was present in
Clearwater during the 'United Churches of Florida' ploy, staying at a
condominium in Dunedin. He was worried about his health and had
with him two personal physicians, Jim Dincalci, who had accompanied
him to Washington DC in March 1976, and Kima Douglas. There is no
reason to suppose he was not fully aware of all the operations
being conducted against opponents. His wife, Mary Sue Hubbard,
was responsible for instigating many of them and, as we shall
see shortly, her appetite for dirty tricks was not confined to

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Clearwater. When the LRH entourage moved away and the local
opposition had passed its peak in 1976, Clearwater was still nominally
the HQ of Scientology in the USA. It was here that the highest levels of
the 'tech' were delivered and therefore it was here that the *creme de la
creme* of Scientology's aspiring thetans came to be trained and put
through their paces. They stayed in the Fort Harrison with their
families or in the Sandcastle Motel and when Hubbard released the
'New Era Dianetics' courses in 1978, it was regarded as the 'top tech
terminal'. This event, incidentally, was known as The Year of
Technical Breakthroughs, and in org-speak as 'NOTS A.D.28'.

My own visit to Flag, as Clearwater is known, took place in a calmer
climate. Young families played around in the courtyard of new
accommodation at the rear of the Fort Harrison. The auditing rooms
buzzed with activity and echoed to accents from all round the globe.
Upstairs in the Fort Harrison a careful restoration had taken place of
the Crystal Ballroom once used by citizens of Clearwater for big functions
and high-school graduations. In a careful piece of fence-mending
the Scientologists had not only restored it but had opened it to public
hire for functions. And a good job they have made too. The Robert
Adam style elliptical room with its pink carpet woven in Ulster at $32
per square yard is justifiably the pride and joy of Karen Valles who
showed me round. There was an exhibition on show of work by artists
who were Scientologists and much among it that would have no
trouble in competing among the best in an open exhibition. The
posters of Gottfried Helnwein impressed me greatly and Karen was at
pains to point out that HCOBs on the subject of art were used in
fostering creativity, 'What LRH did was to lay out "importances" which
make it much easier to grasp the appropriate art form.' I mumbled
polite assent and we went up to the penthouse which was being
refurbished. It overlooks the City Hall in Clearwater, Mayor Cazares'
old perch. His successor, Mayor (Mrs) Kathy Kelly, enjoys a less
hostile relationship with the Church of Scientology but it is still not
without its prickly areas.

In September 1984. in the week in which I visited Clearwater, the
city had just announced proposed regulations which would clear the
downtown area of tax-exempt organizations - among which the
Church of Scientology, as a religious foundation, numbered
significantly. Eight of Scientology's ten properties in the town were in
that area. It would have moved the ground literally from under the
Church's feet in Florida. A spokesman for Clearwater City denied

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that the proposal was aimed specifically at the Church of Scientology.
He said that Clearwater needed tax dollars to develop downtown and
that these were not forthcoming from tax-exempt organizations.

It was not the first time the city had moved to rid itself of the
Scientologists. In spring 1982 it invited Boston attorney Michael Flynn,
scourge of Scientology in the United States, to present a series of
hearings on the church. For five days a series of witnesses, including
Cazares, Paulette Cooper and Hubbard's estranged son Ronald (alias
DeWolf), testified to the blacker side of the Church of Scientology.
The church declined to participate since it argued it could not
cross-examine the witnesses and could only put its case after Flynn had
poisoned the ground. The five days were effectively used by Flynn and
despite the cost of $160,000 for the hearings he left the Clearwater
authority a blueprint with which to eradicate Scientology from its
doorstep.

The city began by putting pressure on the Church of Scientology to
grant refunds to dissatisfied clients. But by far the most controversial
move was the proposed Clearwater 'Charitable Solicitation Ordinance'
which would enable the authorities to regulate the activities of
any such organization collecting more than $10,000 annually.
Flag, one-time jewel in the Scientology crown, earned the Church of
Scientology a thousand times that amount. The Scientologists
appealed against the ordinance to the courts on the grounds that it
violated the First Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing
freedom of religion. Judge Jovachivech at first saw it that way too, but
she changed her mind four months later and held that the proposed
ordinance was indeed constitutional and advised both sides that they
could appeal. That is where the case was in 1986 (along with many
others involving the Church of Scientology and its opponents) in a
legal limbo that drags on from year to year.

Another move by the city administrators was to hold a referendum
to approve a Bay Front Development which would gobble up the
Sandcastle Motel. The city has not forgiven nor forgotten the events
of 1976, despite vigorous efforts by officials of the Church of
Scientology to make amends.

As I walked from the Fort Harrison to the Sandcastle Motel with
Public Affairs Director, former lawyer Richard ('Rich') Haworth, we
stopped at a pedestrian crossing with no cars in sight. I was about to
proceed but he waited quietly for the green light to show. He explained
that he and other Scientologists now have to be extra diligent in
observing the law, 'We live in a goldfish bowl here. If a Scientologist

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is walking down the street wearing socks of different colours, then
somebody will notice.'

As we swam up and down the Sandcastle Motel swimming-pool
and youthful Scientologists resident for courses walked round, Rich
Haworth explained to me why being a Scientologist was important to
him. 'In the day that the button is to be pushed, it's important that the
guy is a "Clear", then it will only be pushed in a way that is
unavoidable. It's basically survival that we're talking about. I can do
more for the survival of the planet by being here in the Church of
Scientology Public Affairs Department than practising law. It's dying
with your boots on rather than being a spectator. Spectatorism is
rampant in the media and people adopt "I don't have an opinion" as a way
of life. Flynn's products are destruction and death. He doesn't put
anything in place of what he's destroying. Handling Flynn is
counter-productive,' Rich Haworth continued. 'The main show is what is
going to improve people and that is the show we're going to keep on the
road. We have a number of improved people working in society to improve
it. That's what we're about.'

Would even arch-enemy Flynn be capable of redemption, I cheekily
asked. 'Yes,' said Rich with a smile, 'but an individual's improvement
depends on the overts he's committed and Flynn would have a long
way to audit. Scientologists can pick themselves up by their
bootstraps but if it weren't for the integrity of what LRH did we
couldn't do that. One of the real tragedies of psychology is Situation
Ethics and people get lost in a conflicting mass of ideas of what is right
and wrong. Whereas LRH says if your action does the greatest good
for the greatest number of Dynamics then it's right.' I seemed to recall
that it was John Stuart Mill who said it, not Hubbard, and that it was
called Utilitarianism.

Back at lunch in the Fort Harrison (a rather indifferent selection of
salads at high prices), I was introduced to two Class XII auditors, the
top-rank supervisors of the 'tech'. They both had somewhat intense
stares and as they seemed to use their eyeballs rather more than their
tongues, lunch was not a coruscating display of wit and wisdom. The
only drop of blood I managed to squeeze out of these stony stares was
from John Eastment, who has a masters degree in Electrical Engineering.
What were the kind of things that auditing could solve, I asked,
and was told that if there was a marital problem it could be chased
back to source. Example? Bloop, bloop went the eyes. Apparently if
the wife had burnt the toast and her husband had shouted at her, that
could be an engram that was choking the relationship. It would have

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to be audited out. We finished lunch with me reflecting that it was no
wonder that people ran up so many hours of costly auditing trying to
get a little back-chat from Class XII auditors.

On the way out of the Fort Harrison I was permitted to peek into a
room where the personal folders are kept, containing all the secrets
disclosed during auditing. The confessions, the guilty responses
squeezed out during 'Sec Checks' were all there. Security is very tight,
Rich explained. No one but your personal auditor and case supervisor
would be allowed to see the contents of one of these folders. 'The
secrets of the auditing room are as sacrosanct as the secrets of the
confession box.'

In the evening it was time for a film-show in the Fort Harrison. A
tape-slide presentation of the life of L. Ron Hubbard was showing and
I was seated in the back row. Childhood pictures of Ron were shown
as the legends about him were regailed by the narrator. 'I'm not like the
other kids, not me, you bet at all,' he wrote in a song at the age of
sixteen, ''cos my dad's a naval man.' As a Scout he met the President of
the US, Calvin Coolidge, we were told, and was disappointed he had
to go to the President and not the other way around. He noted that the
President had a limp handshake. 'I was the only Scout to have made
the President wince,' noted Ron in his diary, which is strangely the
only document to have recorded the meeting. In Guam, when a youth
in 1928, his red hair attracted stares from the natives. Then he was told
that everyone who had red hair was made a king. He recorded himself
in his diary as 'H.M. the Duke of Guam'. Such blatant immodesty was
presented in such a way that the person already devoted to Hubbard
would smile indulgently with the benefit of hindsight at these glimpses
of destiny granted to the hero.

The tape-slide show ended with Ron signing off in a somewhat final
manner in a message recorded in Las Palmas in 1967: 'I have borne it
too long alone....I need your help...Goodbye for now. I will see
you at the line at the other end of the Bridge....' This message was
made at a time when Ron was supposed to have relinquished control
over Scientology. As we have seen, it was not so at that time. He was
supposed to be in seclusion so that he could devote himself to writing
and this is still the answer given to those who enquire why he
disappeared from view in 1980.

After the film-show I chatted to an old salt, Wally Burgess from
Australia, who has been a Scientologist since 1954 and voyaged on the
*Apollo*. He was tough, weatherbeaten and bald. The hour was late but
he was there in uniform as if the Fort Harrison and 'Flag' were still at

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sea and he was on watch. The hooded eyes watched me shrewdly. 'The
greatest single difficulty we have is in stating the man's [LRH] abilities
in such a way that people will listen. He's such a smart fella,' said
Wally the Aussie. 'We probably err in trying to pass on too much to
the uninitiated. You've gotta approach it on a gradient that he can
accept. When I began in 1954 I could never have accepted my present
understanding of what he has achieved.' This
all-will-be-revealed-when-you're-ready approach enhances the
mystique for many. But it also explains why there are so many
pleasant and apparently open people within Scientology.

Breakfast at the Sandcastle Motel with Rich Haworth was memorable
for three things. First, the splendid sensation of breakfasting alfresco
overlooking the Clearwater harbour. Secondly, the waffles dripping
with maple syrup which I ordered with my mixed grill. Third, the
curious little note which came with the bill. It was a score-sheet for
our attractive waitress. I did not have to mark her feminine attributes but
her performance as a waitress out of ten. This, Rich Haworth explained,
was standard throughout Scientology. Everyone is assessed on
their performance and it is a measure of their effectiveness in
following the 'tech'. Mission holders and auditors are assessed on how
many people they are 'flowing up the Bridge'. Their 'stats' can be
written in dollars and figures, but a waitress needs another objective
measure. My subjective assessment would be added to that of others
and constitute her 'stats' for performance purposes. Rich gave her a
score of ten. After such a breakfast could I do anything but follow his
lead? However, when we then went up to my room I found an assessment
sheet from the maid asking me to give her some stats. The room
seemed tidy but, alas, the toilet remained unflushed. I jokingly
remarked that it was good to find Scientological maids were as
imperfect as others. 'Tell her why,' said Rich earnestly. 'She'd appreciate
that.' Whether or not my reminder about the toilet-bowl helped my
room-maid to edge an inch further to the state of 'Clear', I have no
idea, but I departed sparkling Clearwater with a flat feeling.

My courteous host was within the week promoted from Public
Affairs to an executive post at 'Flag', then within a month was
transferred to the Los Angeles HQ where his expertise as a lawyer
would presumably come in handy since the Church of Scientology was
rumoured to be spending in excess of $1.5 million a month in legal fees
during 1984. As in the case of members of the armed services, he was
given a posting.

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Staff members in Scientology are like Navy personnel at sea. They
are on call for duty at all hours without overtime and the hours are
often long. A typical day is 9.15 a.m to 11 p.m. While every effort is
made to post husbands and wives to the same org, they can spend
months with several thousand miles between them as they fulfil their
duties. While it is as hierarchical as the Navy on which it is modelled,
the Sea Org could never be accused of transgressing Equal Rights for
Women. Scientology is probably unique in the proportion of women
in influential posts. Prime among them is Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue,
who competed with her husband in the invention of bigger and better
dirty tricks when she headed the Guardians' Office.

Although Rich Haworth and his colleagues in Public Affairs
presented a most acceptable face of Scientology, the documents do not
lie. The documents in question were among the 48,149 removed from
Church of Scientology premises in Los Angeles and Washington on 8
July 1977 by FBI agents. They showed an amazingly successful campaign
to infiltrate government agencies, place disinformation and
gather blackmail material on both enemies and on their own agents. In
retrospect the arrests and convictions which followed have been
portrayed as the bringing to book of a few black sheep who had strayed
in attempting to counteract false reports which the Government
harboured in opposing Scientology. Nothing could be further from
the truth. It was the Church of Scientology which was charged with
inserting false reports in these agencies. The eleven conspirators
indicted were the top rank of the Guardians' Office, the senior people
in administering Hubbard's 'tech', and included his own wife.

The blueprint for this campaign was written by Mary Sue Hubbard
on 16 December 1969. It is Guardian Order (GO)121669. Here are some
excerpts: 'MAJOR TARGET: To use any and all means to detect any
infiltration, double-agent or disaffected staff member, Scientologist
or relatives of Scientologists and by any and all means to render null
any harm such may have rendered Scientology....To establish intelligence
files on all such persons...to make full use of all files on the
organization to effect your major target. These include personnel files,
Ethics files, dead files, central files, training files, PROCESSING FILES
and requests for refunds' [my caps]. This document concludes: 'This is a
continuing program on which projects will be issued from time to
time.' It was signed MARY SUE HUBBARD. This was the foundation-stone
on which the Operations against Cazares and the others were built.
But once it had been operating for a few years, there were many
things done in its furtherance which broke the law.

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Any evidence linking the Hubbards to these activities was potential
dynamite. To counteract it, several 'Operations' were developed. The
first of these, 'Operation Snow White', was prepared by Hubbard
himself while in hiding in an apartment in Queens, NY City with Jim
Dincalci in 1973 while he was feeling ill and keeping low from the
possibility of extradition to face the French anti-Church of Scientology
case. By 1977 there were three others. The first of these was an
early-warning system which would alert the Guardians to any attempt
to indict or file a suit against Hubbard personally and which would
raise his 'level of personal security immediately very high', i.e. enable
him to dodge the authorities. The early-warning system was to be
activated by any of the various agents of the Guardians planted in
various government agencies including the IRS. There was also
'Operation Bulldozer Leak' which was designed to use these same
agents to spread the rumour that Hubbard was no longer in charge of
or responsible for the doings of the Church of Scientology. But by far
the biggest parcel of dynamite was the 'Red Box system' introduced on
25 March 1977. The Red Box in question was a container at all orgs
which was to be removed by a designated person in the event of a raid.
Red Box material was defined as: '(a) Proof that a Scientologist is
involved in criminal activities; (b) anything illegal that incriminates
MSH/LRH (the Hubbards).' Also included were details about any
operations against government groups or persons, or which contained
illegal activities and the details of confidential financial accounts
Among those 48,149 documents was a lot of Red Box material.

The events which led up to the FBI raid were straight out of the
Watergate scenario and became known as 'Silvergate'. In 1976 the
Church of Scientology had used its agent 'Silver' inside the IRS to
obtain several intelligence flies on celebrities, politicians and big
names. This originated in GO 1361 dated 4 January 1976, but it has
never been made clear whether the purpose of gathering these files was
to embarrass the IRS by making them public or to use them against the
people concerned. Among the files stolen were those on California
Governor Edmund Brown; Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and his
wife; singer Frank Sinatra and actor John Wayne, among others. The
Deputy Guardian (Information) Dick Weigand sent the files to Deputy
Guardian (US) Henning Heldt who returned them as they were 'too
hot to have in my files'.

In March 1976 Guardian agent Mike Meisner (fresh from being 'run
over' by Sharon Thomas's car in Rock Creek Park, Washington), met
agent Gerald Bennett Wolfe, who was undercover as 'Silver' in the

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IRS building at 1111 Constitution Ave, Washington NY. They entered
the building in the evening and flashed Wolfe's ID card at the security
man. Inside, they forced open the door of the room used to produce ID
cards. While Meisner thumbed through the book of instructions for
the photographic machine, Wolfe typed fictitious names on four blank
cards and they made themselves fake ID cards, two for each of them.
Meisner took the false name of 'John Foster'. Then they vanished into
the night. In April the two men returned to the office of Thomas Crate,
an auditor who had tax records of LRH and MSH, but found the door
locked and persuaded a suspicious cleaning lady to open it. She
obliged on two other occasions while they photocopied the files before
returning them to Crate's office.

Meanwhile, Sharon Thomas was now in place in the Justice Department
where she had obtained a job as secretary to attorney Paul Figley
who dealt with Freedom of Information Act cases. (The Church of
Scientology was currently pursuing an FOI lawsuit against the Energy
Research and Development Administration and she was churning out
photocopies of correspondence and other material to pass to her
bosses in the GO.)

The Guardians were pretty pleased with themselves. However,
disaster struck on 11 June. Meisner and Wolfe were sitting in the
library of the US Courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill, waiting for
the cleaners to vacate the office of Nathan Dodell, an old Church of
Scientology foe whose personal file they were after in order to devise
an operation to remove him as Assistant US Attorney for the District
of Columbia. But a suspicious librarian summoned a couple of FBI
agents and the two Guardians soon found themselves explaining to
Special Agent Christine Hansen that they had been in the library to do
legal research and to use the photocopy machine. Meisner asked if
they were under arrest and when she said no, they left.

Meisner flew to California the next day to report to the Guardians'
Office who decided that a rescue operation should be mounted. The
cover-up operation was planned in Los Angeles at the offices of the
Guardians in Fifield Manor. After reading Meisner's report,
Guardians Heldt and Snider were of the opinion that Wolfe and
Meisner should be spirited away beyond the reach of the FBI. Then
they would not have to face charges and the matter would be closed.
Dick Weigand argued that, on the contrary, it would spur the FBI to
look more closely into the affairs of the Guardians' Office. He put
forward a plan which involved Wolfe's pleading guilty to possessing a
false ID, and invented a false cover story. 'John Foster', Wolfe would

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say, was someone he had met for a few drinks in a bar and who offered
to teach him how to undertake legal research. While pursuing this
ploy, and under the influence of alcohol, they had seen the room in the
Courthouse in which ID cards were made and had entered and made
themselves the cards for a 'lark'. Since they had only met in the bar,
Wolfe was unable to contact Foster again and did not know where he
lived. Once Wolfe was given a minor sentence, Meisner could appear
and plead guilty. That way the Church of Scientology would not be
brought into matters at all.

Thus on 14 June, Weigand's secretary Janet Finn came to Meisner's
motel room in Los Angeles, cut his hair, dyed it, shaved off his
moustache and arranged for him to have soft contact lenses fitted.
Suitably disguised, he slipped undercover and moved into Weigand's
apartment. Back in Washington, Wolfe made sure that any mention of
Meisner in the Guardians' Orifice was removed from the files. Wolfe
was arrested on 30 June by Christine Hansen and duly told his version
of the cover story. On 28 July 1976 Wolfe appeared before a
magistrate who bound him over for action by the Grand Jury.
However, to the consternation of the Guardians, a few days later on 5
August a warrant was issued for the arrest of one Michael Meisner.

Weigand was mystified how the FBI knew Meisner's true identity.
He could only speculate in a report to Guardian supremo, Mary Sue
Hubbard, that the FBI had located his former apartment house and
shown his photo to a neighbour. He suggested several courses of
action: further disguise for Meisner and the possibility of moving him
out of the country. Mary Sue Hubbard replied: 'On getting him
abroad, unless you have a good ID for him different than his own, it
might be dangerous. He would better be "lost" in some large city where
it would be difficult to find him.' Would it be possible to get Meisner an
alibi she asked Weigand, in a letter dated 18 September. Weigand
pointed out there would be difficulties. It would come down to 'our
word against two FBI agents, cleaners and guards plus handwriting
experts...fingerprint experts.' In a letter of 22 September, he
favoured getting Meisner out of the country for five years until the
statute of limitations had expired (an erroneous assumption as it
turned out). He added ominously, 'There would be attempts to get him
to turn or otherwise implicate us or others in various wrong-doings.'
But Meisner was having none of it. He did not want to leave the
country. He was becoming restive and missing his wife and children.
Mary Sue Hubbard suggested a cold-blooded alternative which
involved portraying Meisner as jealous of his wife's productivity

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within the Church of Scientology, implying that he had organized the
burglary in a fit of jealous pique. Clearly Meisner was expendable in
an effort to avoid the Church of Scientology taking responsibility for
agents acting under its instructions.

A trail was also laid by the Guardians using one of their
Scientologists who was a lieutenant in the San Diego Police Force.
Lt. Warren Young requested information regarding the arrest-warrant
for Meisner from the National Crime Information Center computer.
When Special Agent Christine Hansen ordered an investigation into
why San Diego were interested, Lt. Young informed the FBI that he
had arrested Meisner the previous day on a traffic offence. Although in
fact Meisner had never been to San Diego, the FBI were diverted by
following the false trail and Weigand remarked with satisfaction that
this 'can't help but help us, while dispersing their investigation'. But
the FBI hounds were following several real scents as well as the false
one. The Washington Church of Scientology was served with a Grand
Jury subpoena for all the personnel records of Michael Meisner on
8 October. They began to burrow and the Grand Jury case dragged on
through the winter months. The Guardians several times considered
plans to turn Meisner in and hope for a light sentence and an end to the
investigation.

During this period Meisner had been moved around motels and
lodgings under false names and the strain was beginning to tell. He
began to threaten that unless the Wolfe case was settled soon he would
surrender. In April 1977, Guardian Henning Heldt issued an order to
restrain Meisner and to hold him against his will if he attempted to
escape. The Guardians had moved from their role as protectors to one
of captors. They had added kidnap to their crimes.

On 1 May, Michael Meisner was told he was to be moved to
another apartment. He refused and was bound, gagged and forced
into a waiting car and taken to an apartment at 3219 Descanso Drive
in Los Angles and kept there. Eventually in an attempt to relax his
captors he agreed to co-operate. His guards were sufficiently relaxed
by the end of a month and on 29 May he escaped in a cab and took a
Greyhound bus to Las Vegas. From there he telephoned Jim Douglass
at the Los Angeles HQ and a meeting was arranged for the next day.
The Guardians pressured Meisner to return to Los Angeles and after a
meal at Canter's Restaurant he was returned to Descanso Drive.

Meanwhile, the scheduled appearance of agent Silver before the
Grand Jury took place on 10 June in Washington, and 'Silvergate'
moved into another level of criminality. During cross-examination

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Wolfe stated several facts he knew to be false and the following
exchange took place:

Q: Now did you know Mr Foster by any other name?
Wolfe: No, I didn't.

Q: You only knew him by John Foster?
Wolfe: Right.

He made these statements when he knew not only the full name and
whereabouts of Michael Meisner but who was hiding him.

When the news of Wolfe's Grand Jury appearance crossed to the
coast where Meisner was being held, now at an apartment on South
Verdugo in Glendale, he made his second attempt to 'blow', this time a
successful one. He took two buses to a bowling-alley to evade pursuit
and telephoned Assistant Attorney Garey Stark in Washington DC
offering to surrender. Within two hours three FBI agents were at the
bowling-alley and Meisner was soon on his way to Washington by
plane. In order to lull the Guardians into a false sense of security, a
letter was dispatched from Meisner (postmarked San Francisco) to
Guardian Brian Andrus which stated that he was lying low for a
couple of weeks because he needed time to be by himself. The steely
response of the top Guardian Mary Sue Hubbard in a communique to
Heldt was typical: 'I frankly would not waste Bur I resources looking
for him but would instead utilize resources to figure out a way to
defuse him should he turn traitor.'

A week after Meisner had surrendered to the authorities, the strike
against the Church of Scientology came suddenly and swiftly. At
6 a.m. on 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search-warrants and
sledgehammers broke into Fifield Manor, the Guardians' HQ in Los
Angeles, and simultaneously into the Washington org. Their haul of
documents formed the basis of the case which led a Grand Jury on 15
August to indict eleven Guardians - from Mary Sue Hubbard at the
top to Sharon Thomas at agent level. Among the eleven were Henning
Heldt, Duke Snider and Gerald Bennett Wolfe (alias 'Silver'). But two
Guardian chiefs slipped through the net: Jane Kember, Head of the
GO Worldwide, and her deputy, Morris ('Mo') Budlong, fled to
England.

It took two years to bring the verdict in on the other nine and the
sentencing memorandum on the fugitives Kember and Budlong was
dated 16 December 1980. During the period between arrest and
sentencing, the Scientologists were appealing and wriggling to justify
their actions. Kember and Budlong resisted extradition from England

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and appealed to the House of Lords. Throughout the process they
argued that the Guardians had been tempted into taking their actions
because of a long-standing persecution of Scientology by government
agencies. Their actions were part of a 'False Report Correction
Program' which was to locate false charges against Scientology being
held in government files and to eliminate or correct these. Many of
these reports, the Church of Scientology contended, were originated
by Interpol and spread through its network and unable to be checked
or corrected. But the documents seized by the FBI told a very different
and sordid story. Many of the documents detailed the special 'drills'
used to train a Guardian. 'Intelligence Specialist Training Routine
TR-L' trained the student 'how to outflow false data effectively' - in
other words, how to lie. The student was supposed to initiate a
falsehood upon which he or she would be interrogated. Blinking,
looking away when answering or fumbling a response, were all
greeted by 'flunk' from the coach and the exercise began over again
until 'he/she can lie facilely'. The document gives an example:

Q: Where do you come from?

Student: I come from the Housewives' Committee on Drug
Abuse.

Q: But you said earlier that you were single?

Student: Well, actually I was married but I am divorced. I have
two kids in the suburbs where I'm a housewife. In fact, I'm a
member of the PTA.

Q: What town is that you live in?
Student: West Brighton.

Q: But there is no public school in West Brighton.

Student: I know. I send my children to school in Brighton and
that's where I'm a PTA member...

Lying was only one of the Guardians' tricks. In a memo of 17
October 1971, Kathy Gregg outlines the twelve steps for a 'strike'
('gathering information on a covert basis'). In May 1974, Deputy
Guardian Worldwide, Mo Budlong, had refined this into a manual of
'how a professional operates in stealing materials by infiltration or by
straight breaking, entering and theft'. This included how to avoid
leaving fingerprints and the use of lock-picking devices. In May
1975, the Guardians were concerned with the difference in law
between 'breaking and entering' and 'unlawful entry' and one memo
frankly states, 'a large proportion, if not the majority of our

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high-priority successful collections actions, fail into the category of
second-degree burglary, which is a felony'.

While the Guardians claimed that their activities were designed to
remove false reports, the documents show otherwise. In a worldwide
project dated 16 September 1975, David Gaiman, Deputy Guardian
PR W/W, orders the planting of false information in US Security
Agency computers 'to hold up American security to ridicule'. The
project called for the use of plants to place the information, which
would have involved a pedigree cat being placed on record and a
sequence of events being planned which would lead to the cat holding
a press conference.

The plants in police departments, the IRS, and other government
agencies made the Guardians' Office into an amateur espionage
agency. Like conventional spies they also developed their escape
hatches. 'Project Quaker' dated 9 November 1976 involved setting up
a system of safe houses and ready passports so that Guardians wanted
by the authorities for questioning could suddenly disappear in such a
way that they could not be accused of fleeing prosecution. Since
December 1975 there had already been developed an 'early-warning
system' using the inside agents to alert the GO to any possible move by
the authorities against Scientology and Hubbard in particular.
Personal security on Hubbard would then be raised so that he might
evade indictment. During the legal process against the eleven GO
members, there was a constant fear that Hubbard himself would be
implicated. He and his wife Mary Sue separated after the 8 July raid so
that he could be distanced from proceedings. In the event, he remained
an unindicted co-conspirator.

By far the most sinister and nasty of the GO tricks were practised
against those who had been subject to Scientology auditing and whose
loyalty to the 'org' had to be ensured. These unsuspecting souls had
perhaps imagined that the contents of their 'processing folders' were
sacrosanct and (as was taught officially) would in no circumstances be
revealed to anyone. They had reckoned without GO 121669 issued by
Mary Sue Hubbard on 16 December 1969, which was concerned with
the detection of double agents infiltrated into Scientology by the
Government or with disaffected Scientologists who might supply
information to the authorities. As quoted earlier, it included the
following operating targets: 'To make full use of all files on the
organization to effect your major target. These include personnel files,
Ethics files, dead files, central files, training files, PROCESSING FILES and
requests for refunds.' [my caps]. As we have seen, many of the

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questions asked during auditing touch areas which are intensely
personal. 'Engrams', in popular language, might be described as
'hang-ups'. 'Overts' are acts about which one can be expected to feel
guilty. Add to these the self-confessed crimes and guilty acts elicited
during a 'Sec-Check' and you have the stuff of which emotional blackmail
can be made. It was precisely to this area that the Guardians' attention
was turned. Michael Meisner was audited sometimes for four hours per
day during his eleven months as a fugitive and this information,
detailing all his weak points, was found in the documents culled in the
raid.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. One file culled in January 1977
from the records of someone who was feeding information about the
infiltration used by the GO contains many purple passages. His use of
drugs, his *menage a trois* with his wife and another man in bed
together and his forgery of a cheque are all detailed together with his
sexual habits and his hang-ups about the size of his penis. His second
wife's personal details are then detailed in a separate memo. Both this
man (IH) and his wife (K) had given incriminating evidence to the IRS
about Scientology and the GO officer summarizing his case concludes:
'This guy sure looks like a plant to me', adding ominously, 'There are a
lot of strings to pull on this guy.'

Where no files existed on their enemies, the Guardians would resort
to other tricks. Smear-tactics were one of these and there are various
drills to help their operatives execute a successful smear. 'Take into
account effectiveness, security, legality, workability etc when making
your decisions. Choose which basic plan is best', reads the instruction
at the head of a sheet in which various scenarios are laid out. Options
include calling the enemy's boss and telling him that the man is
homosexual, harassing him with threatening phone calls in the middle
of the night and spreading false rumours about him. One example
concerns a teacher who got a Scientology grant cancelled and is causing
trouble for the Church of Scientology. The options for dealing with
her are as follows: '(1) Cleverly kidnap her and run reverse processes
on her while implanting the phrase "I will never attack Scientology
again. I love Scientology." (2) Get copies of the court records where
she was found guilty of child-molesting and send a copy to the school
principal, Board of Education and a few parents. (3) Send a male PSM
in on her who, after she falls in love with him, will get her to move out
of the country with him. (4) Pay ten of her students to write dirty
phrases about her on the schoolroom blackboard.' These are the only
options offered. (Reverse processes are implanting 'engrams' during

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auditing instead of removing them. It is strictly against the official
ethics codes of Scientology and is equivalent to a psychotherapist
implanting a neurosis in a patient for spite.)

Other wild schemes involved connecting a bishop opposed to the
Church of Scientology to pornographic activities, poisoning a
newspaper editor or, more humanely, putting itching powder in his
clothes while he is asleep or telling everyone that he is a Communist.
It would all be laughable if it were not the case that these very tactics
have been used against dozens of people unlucky enough to have
acquired the title 'enemy of Scientology'.

In the early 1970s, sociologist Roy Wallis was completing his
research project on Scientology eventually published under the title
*The Road to Total Freedom* when he became the victim of the
Guardians' paranoia. Ironically the book is now accepted by the
Public Affairs office of the Church of Scientology as reasonable and
fair (they even loaned me a copy) but at the time an undercover
agent was sent to Stirling University where Wallis then taught.
Posing as a student, he attempted to get Wallis to tell him if he was
involved in the drug scene. Wallis recognized him from Saint Hill, so
the student then changed his story, claiming to be a defector from the
Church of Scientology. In 'The Moral Career of a Research Project'
(published within *Doing Sociological Research* in 1977) Wallis
describes what happened next: 'In the weeks following his visit a
number of forged letters came to light, some of which were
supposedly written by me. These letters sent to my university
employers, colleagues and others, implicated me in a variety of acts
from a homosexual love affair to spying for the drug squad. Because
I had few enemies and because this attention followed so closely
upon the receipt of my paper by the Church of Scientology organization,
it did not seem too difficult to infer the source of these attempts
to inconvenience me.'

Writers, journalists, politicians, even judges sitting on cases
involving the Church of Scientology - no one was immune from the
Guardians. The decade of the seventies had begun with the *Apollo* at
sea and Hubbard riding high on the crest of a wave of expansion in
orgs around the world. When he came ashore in Clearwater, the
boom continued and the Guardians had the confidence to act as if
they were an alternative CIA. But by the end of the seventies their
crimes were beginning to catch up with them. In December 1979 the
nine Guardians received sentences ranging from four to five years
and had $10,000 fines imposed. Jane Kember and Mo Budlong were

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to receive a similar sentence a year later when they were brought back
from England to face the music.

It is argued by the Church of Scientology that those responsible for
the crimes of the Guardians have been purged from the leadership of
the Church of Scientology and the GO has now been abolished. This is
perfectly true. Jane Kember ascended the serpentine snake of the
Church of Scientology's hierarchy and has descended the ladder of
ignominy. She is living in East Grinstead, still a Scientologist but
without any position of influence. Mary Sue Hubbard is out of prison
and was 'busted' from her posts. On leaving prison, she lived apart
from the husband in whose shadow she perpetrated so many of the
Guardians' operations. Now a new breed of Young Turks are in
charge, but as we shall see, the leopards have not changed their spots.